Tear it up and ruin it? Nope....but steel is indefinately harder on yourgun than brass would be. Also it is more succeptible to rust. Check these casings for anti-corrosive primers. Cheap ammo often has corrosive primers. This WILL ruin your BBL. So you can buy cheep but watch the corrosive primers. In addition to the primers watch the lacquer coated casings. These gum up your gun if you dont watch out. I was in the shop with a guy who was trying to send his gun back to bushmaster. It was so caked up with the stuff. I checked in with the shop later bushy cleaned it all out for the guy. Odd...

Yup, AR's like to be clean. When a buddy of mine bought his first AR- I gave him some pointers along the way with a heavy emphasis on keeping it clean. He made his way to Camp Perry with a dirty one where I guess the humidity played it's card. In short order, he said he was sitting there taking in awful looks and snide remarks from a USMC Line Armorer who preached a cleaning sermon to him. He's a great fella and a good friend... but still- I ain't a-gonna let him forget that.

Been shooting Wolf for years, never a problem. Just keep your firearm clean. Wolf now uses a polymer coating on their shells. Lacquer is a thing of the past unless you get old ammo that's been sitting around in a mom and pop gun shop.

Wolf now uses a polymer coating on their shells. Lacquer is a thing of the past unless you get old ammo that's been sitting around in a mom and pop gun shop.

From my experiences, neither the lacquer or the polymer coatings have anything to do with the problems caused by steel case ammo. I have seen both lacquer and polymer steel cases stick in AR15s. I've also heated lacquer cases to 500F plus and left it much longer than it would ever see that temperature in a rifle and no lacquer melted. I've even seen the Hornady training ammo fail to function in some AR15s and it is superlative ammo, although steel cased.

Clearly the straight walled 5.56x45 case and the chamber of an AR15 are not a great match for steel. My hypothesis is that the steel just doesn't expand the same as the brass and isn't as quick to shrink back. Certainly steel cases work in a lot of ARs with no problems; but just not as reliably as brass.

I think it was on ar15.com that someone mentioned a problem with brass cases sticking in his Colt AR. It boiled down to shoot quite a lot of steel cased ammo followed by brass cased ammo.

The steel cases don't expand and seal the chamber at tightly as brass. This can allow some fouling to enter the chamber. If enough fouling accretes in the chamber, brass cases used later can "stick" in the chamber due to the now uneven surfaces. In the example situations he gave, he had to use a rod to pound the empty case out of the chamber.

I shoot the stuff in my AC556 full-auto. I've examined the spent cases and the poly coating is still intact - indicating that the steel casing never even came into contact with the chamber. If you have a stuck cartridge, the steel casing POSSIBLY could be a little harder on your extractor.

The Wolf ammo got a bad reputation when they were lacquer coated. The lacquer would melt off and gum up the chambers and cause cartridges to stick in the chamber. Not so with the newer poly-coated ammo. My AC556 gets quite hot when I'm shooting it - but not hot enough to melt the poly-coating.

Nor is the worlf ammo really prone to rust - also because they are poly-coated. The only draw back to using the wolf ammo is that it is too dificult to reload. Also, after the cartridge is fired, the cases do become prone to rusting if left out in the elements.

I am buying wolf .223 and 9mm when I can find good deals on the stuff. The ammo dealers have a lot of this stuff on order. I am hoping that after Obama's inaguration, the run on ammo will "cool off" and I might be able to pick up some more cheap wolf ammo at that time.

And, are you talking about poly-coated wolf, or lacquer-coated wolf? Lacquer coated wolf screws up rifles. You can't even find lacquer coated wolf for .223 rifles any longer.

And, please tell me how those rifles were screwed up.

I know that I and other AC556 owners regularly run Wolf poly-coated .223 ammo through our guns at full-auto, with absolutley no ill effects. I can't imagine an AR15 not being able to eat poly-coated wolf ammo. Prior to wolf coming out with the poly-coated cases, no one would use the stuff in their AC556's because it would coat the chamber with hard lacquer resin.

I have witnessed a Bushmaster choke on the polymer casings just the same as the lacquer. After about 100 rounds, whenever it got hot it would have a stuck case that required serious effort to clear. The owner would then scrub the chamber spotless (with hardened carbon deposits so big I initially thought the bolt lugs or some other part had broken) and then it would run another 80-100 rounds. Same rifle ran fine with brass.

I don't think the case coating has anything to do with it because I've seen lacquered cases do just the same thing and nobody has ever shown me a case where the lacquer has melted off - not to mention I cannot do it in my own experiments. I'd also add that Hornady uses lacquered steel in their training ammo and seem to have no problems.

I have seen old Wolf gunk up chambers with a red goo; but that was clearly the neck sealant and not lacquer. I wonder if this is the source of the lacquer myth?

And, are you talking about poly-coated wolf, or lacquer-coated wolf? Lacquer coated wolf screws up rifles. You can't even find lacquer coated wolf for .223 rifles any longer.

And, please tell me how those rifles were screwed up.

I know that I and other AC556 owners regularly run Wolf poly-coated .223 ammo through our guns at full-auto, with absolutley no ill effects. I can't imagine an AR15 not being able to eat poly-coated wolf ammo. Prior to wolf coming out with the poly-coated cases, no one would use the stuff in their AC556's because it would coat the chamber with hard lacquer resin.

Please do a search. This topic has been rehashed over and over again. If you like the stuff from a cheapness perspective, more power to you. If I have sinned against the Wolfammowoobie by again expressing my disdain for the stuff sorry..

I shot a hundred rounds of Wolf Military Classic .223 a couple of weeks ago. The last of the Wolf that I had and out of the 100 rounds I had one failure to feed properly. That seems to be about the average for me personally when I use that stuff however I have zero problems when I shoot brass. I religiously clean and lube my rifle after every shooting session so I don't know why it happens. I decided to stick with brass exclusively when shooting my AR-15. I bought a huge load of Prvi Partizan .223 it's almost as cheap and its brass.

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